On Thursday, Huawei told Reuters that it wants to become the world’s second largest marker of smartphones in two years.

Company chief executive Richard Yu told attendees at the Mate 9 launch event in Munich: "When we announced four years ago that we wanted to sell phones, people told us we were crazy. When we said we wanted to sell 100 million phones, they told us we were crazy."

Today the company is the third-largest smartphone maker right behind Apple and Samsung, and shipped 33.6 million devices in the third quarter of 2016. This gives it a nine percent market share, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

Samsung is still the world leader in smartphone shipments at 75.3 million devices shipped and 20.1 percent of the market, while Apple has shunted out 45.5 million devices with 12 percent.

"We are going to take [Apple] step-by-step, innovation-by-innovation," Yu said. He expects to improve Huawei’s market position by embracing more opportunities in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality.”

With the recently launched Mate 9 smartphone, the company expects to turn a profit in European markets such as Germany, France and Britain - it's already in first place in Finland.

The shift in confidence comes from observations that Apple has struggled to produce anything new with its iPhone hardware, and Samsung has dealt with PR headaches and customer complaints arising from a rare double recall of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone series. Samsung also recalled a washing machine yesterday, but that's a different matter.

Microsoft has apparently identified that some older Xbox 360 units are incompatible with the latest update that the company is pushing out. According to our sources, the issue is with the DVD-ROM drive used in some units; because Microsoft used a number of different drives over the years, it really isn’t surprising that some drives cannot be firmware updated to support the new XGD3 disc format.

According to industry sources, the new XGD3 disc format serves two actual purposes, the first of which is that it modifies the structure of the disc itself so that developers have almost 1GB of extra storage space per disc; and secondly, the new XGD3 format introduces a number of new anti-piracy security measures to prevent the copying of game discs. Developers that we have spoken with who have knowledge of the new XGD3 format claim that Microsoft has put significant work into improving their copy protection and will be working with studios to take it even farther. As part of the latest update, Microsoft is flashing new firmware into the actual DVD-ROM drive. This means if you get the update and you have some other firmware flashed into your DVD-ROM drive, Microsoft is going to automatically re-flash the drive back to the latest revision of the new factory firmware.

Microsoft has identified consoles that contain DVD-ROM drives that are not compatible and Microsoft is offering to upgrade those users to an Xbox 360s with a 250GB hard drive. Of course, you will have to go through the process of filling out the online form and requesting the replacement unit; but there is no cost involved, and once you return your old console to Microsoft they will even give you one year of Xbox Live for free as part of the deal.

Since no games that we know of are currently out using the XGD3 format, this is really not an issue today. However, our sources tell us that Microsoft will be moving to the format soon and that is why they are contacting users of incompatible consoles to make sure that they get upgraded. It is actually nice to see Microsoft being pro-active and trying to get out in front of this issue. For most users, being able to upgrade to a 250GB slim console for free is actually a great thing; and best of all, it is free.

The Nintendo 3DS launch appears to not be without its problems. Some users are apparently complaining about what is being called the “Black Screen of Death.” Once a user gets the black screen of death, it makes the 3DS unusable and basically locked up until the user powers the 3DS off and back on.

Nintendo claims that they are aware of the issue and says that users should download the latest system update that is available online for the unit. If this does not help, Nintendo recommends that affected users should contact their local Nintendo Customer Service Center and have them investigate the issue.

It is not clear yet how many users are experiencing the problem and how widespread the issue is. What we do know is that Nintendo did push out an update for the 3DS on Friday, but it is unclear what the update might have contained or whether it actually had anything in it to address this specific issue.